Beyond comprehension

House faces tough vote on $1.9 trillion more debt

The expenditure and debt numbers are now far beyond human comprehension. If my arithmetic is right, our $14.3 trillion debt would saddle every one of Earth's 6.7 billion people with a personal debt of $2,134. That'd be really bad news to the inhabitants of the world's 45 nations where income per capita is less than $500 per year.

And of course Congress's "debt limits" don't limit anything. They're not a straitjacket on the Federal Government, they're pants with an infinitely expandable waist -- so in Washington it's "All You Can Eat, All the Time."

Let's see what interest rates we have to pay to finance this catastrophic debt, because that's a budget expenditure, as well as raising costs for private sector borrowing. The only reason the inflation rate hasn't taken off, is that the economy continues to wallow in recession, with huge outlays for unemployment supplementals extending as far as the eye can see, and on over the horizon.

What, exactly, is Obama going to do, economic genius that he so obviously is? Seriously large, stimulative tax cuts? Not likely. But could there be some tiny devil perched on Obama's shoulder right this minute, whispering into his ample ear, "O powerful one, Why borrow money if you can just print it?"

If I were the Chinese, I think I'd demand repayment in gold bullion.

Byron

It just gets worse

Well, no, actually -- things are finally getting better, with even the leftist UK Guardian newspaper calling for heads to roll (Climate change email scandal shames the university and requires resignations).

I said long ago that the AGW push had red flags all over it, flapping high in the breeze for all to see: Naive, self-serving faith in laughably weak and incomplete computer models, big money at stake for economic players, big ideological leverage for anti-capitalist, redistributionist political factions, the rush to enforce a politico-scientific orthodoxy, the absurd claims of consensus, and the demands for premature closure on the central questions based on the ridiculous notion of "finished science." This thing had boondoggle written all over it from virtually the word Go.

Byron

Socialized health care failure

Canadian province premier passionately defends Canada's socialized medical care system -- then flies to US for his own heart surgery.

Canadian province premier bails on single-payer system for surgery

Says it all, doesn't it? Socialized medicine is for the little people.

Byron

Predictable

Minnesota wind turbines won’t work in cold weather
(Besides when the wind is not blowing.)

You can just predict this kind of trouble from when you're behind a truck on the highway in cold weather, and you try your windshield washers. Nothing. Your windshield is so bad you can't even see your own hood ornament, but not the feeblest little squirt can be coaxed from those nozzles. When it's sunny and warm and you don't need them, they work fine.

There's something parallel in the demand that Obama show he can fix Medicare before he gets the go-ahead to launch a total overhaul of the entire health care system. How about our technological wizards first show they can develop windshield washers that work in cold weather, then we can talk about depending on wind and solar for our energy needs.

Revolutionary types like to disparage the American Revolution for being insufficiently revolutionary. More like a palace coup, they say, with rich American landowners taking over the reins from rich British merchants. Rights got extended eventually, but the process has been way too incremental and slow. The French Revolution is seen as the Real Thing, the Russian Revolution, also. Absolutely right, and the case in favor of incremental change can rest right there.

Byron

Left view of Obama

Conservative critiques of the Obama presidency are predictable enough. But what does the left think about him? The question might not even interest you, but if it does take a look at How to Squander the Presidency in One Year. It's by a left-liberal progressive college professor, and it ain't pretty: "Barack Obama has now, in just a year's time, become the single most inept president perhaps in all of American history, and certainly in my lifetime. Never has so much political advantage been pissed away so rapidly, and what's more in the context of so much national urgency and crisis. It's astonishing, really, to contemplate how much has been lost in a single year... It's almost as if he were a Republican sleeper politician in some party politics version of the Manchurian Candidate, planted to arise on cue and destroy the Democratic Party from within."

So, the question is: Who is still on board the ObamaBus? Anybody?

Byron

Green Jobs...

...for China!

Huge Texas Wind Farm's Turbines Will Be Made in China

Clean tech has seen a boost as the U.S. pours government funding into renewable energy, and China looks set to reap much of the benefits. Latest example: a Chinese wind-turbine company has just become the exclusive supplier for one of the largest wind-farm developments in the U.S...just 15 percent of the 2,800 new jobs from the new wind-turbine development will take the form of U.S. jobs. The U.S. government has tried to help the nation's renewable energy industry with $500 million in grants...

Let's see, 15% of 2,800 jobs is 420 U.S. jobs. Assuming all 2,800 jobs don't end up in China, that is. But why wouldn't they all end up in China?

The only way they won't all end up in China is if U.S. taxpayers hugely subsidize domestic manufacturers. (Probably be cheaper if that $500 million just went to unemployment benefits.)

Hmmm. Well, er, anyway -- Green jobs are the future of America!

Obamanomics at its finest.

Byron

Swedish Meatball

UN climate change expert: there could be more errors in report

The IPCC climate report was, it turns out, an error-filled mess. Yet this is the report that was given the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize! It was lauded for "two decades of scientific reports that have created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming." Create the data, create the consensus! And Al Gore was the 2007 co-winner for his movie about polar bears playing with hockey sticks or something.

Isn't it about time for the Swedish Academy to junk the Nobel Peace Prize, which long ago became an embarrassing, politicized joke? If they don't want to do that, how about having it go to the winner of "American Idol," for bringing the world together to watch contestants sing and dance? That has a sort of peaceful ring to it.

Byron

Why AA failed

http://airamerica.com/

It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon, and that the Company will file soon under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business.

Who will notice? I thought they were gone a long time ago. In fact, this is their second bankruptcy. The first time, in 2006, they were bailed out by George Soros, Rob Reiner, and others in a coalition of liberal fat cats. No such this time; I guess the welfare mentality has its limits, and those folks got tired of pouring their own money down this particular rat hole.

But that doesn't mean they wouldn't like to pour your good money after bad. Last year, the solution the left was peddling for its inability to attract an audience in the talk radio free market was, naturally, to destroy the free market. The demand was that Government (the FCC) step in and impose an ideological quota system.

This from Daily Kos, last August:

"We need to contact our news outlets, write letters to our papers, and challenge this false idea that there is no market for liberal talk. If we don't, the continuing domination of the airwaves by conservatives will continue to perpetuate the lie that no one wants to hear progressive talk. They are not serving their communities, as they are required to do under FCC law, by keeping out the left's point of view."

The plain truth, of course, is that the only barrier to "the left's point of view" attracting an audience is...the left's point of view. MSNBC's miserable TV ratings are another case in point, with their few viewers mostly tuning in to watch the low comedy of Keith Olbermann's freak-outs. The fact that NPR survives by virtue of an involuntary taxpayer subsidy is yet another example; give people a choice by making NPR support a tax return checkoff item and watch what happens. (In Britain, the thoroughly left-wing BBC survives because it's subsidized by taxes everybody with a TV set is forced to pay, which amount to about $200 per year for a color set. To find tax dodgers, authorities roam the neighborhoods in vans with detection devices, and being caught means heavy fines and possible jail time. The Left's ideal system of mass media is one where the masses pay to be propagandized. They've established exactly that system in every nation where they've managed to achieve political control.

Air America failed because it attracted no audience. It attracted no audience because the liberal mainstream media was already doing the job AA set out to do, and doing it much better. Conservative radio flourishes (as does Fox) because its audience is not served, but rather is scorned, by the mainstream media.

(For a typical example, yesterday on ABC's "Good Morning America," anchor and Liberal Democrat operative George Stephanopoulos came on to preview his interview with Obama to be shown later in the show. His promo was to say that, following the GOP win in Massachusetts, he had sat down with the President to ask him "how we go forward from here." We. With a mainstream media operates like that, what need is there for Air America? None at all.)

Byron

Convenient Out

How many Democrats in Congress, especially but not only in the House, privately hope Brown wins in MA so the ObamaCare bill goes back to the drawing boards for a do-over? (And, better yet, Martha Coakley takes the blame, for running such miserably bad campaign.)

If I had to bet, I'd say 30-40% of them. Who wants to try to get reelected with this stinking sardine can tied to his tail, banging along behind him at every campaign stop?

Byron